KIRKUS REVIEW

It’s hard to pick a favorite here, but one of the best (and
funniest) stories is “Love and Heuristics,” in which a man named Jonah, both hapless and clueless, can’t figure out
why he can’t keep a girlfriend—especially since he’s thrifty enough to buy
Valentine’s candy a day late at 50 percent off (which he gives to his current
girlfriend on Feb. 15) and won’t give flowers because “they just die.” In other
words, he doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body—and things get even worse
when he starts to rely on advice about women from the office Lothario. The
story that gives the book its title introduces us to Ethan, who finds himself
drawn to Maggie, the girl next door and his daughter’s swimming teacher.
Unfortunately, everything starts to go wrong in Ethan’s life: the position he
wanted has been filled by the 27-year-old son of the company’s CEO, and Ethan’s
nephew, Scudder, a graffiti artist (“Yo, it’s not vandalism. It’s freedom of expression"), comes to live with them,
with comic—and almost dire—consequences. “Girlfriend” focuses on the culture of
the recently divorced. While Hannah “seethes” at men in general, she does show
some nominal interest in Nicholas when she meets him picking up his children at
school: “he was not bad looking, in the simplistic way that any man could be
acceptable if you were angling for competence.” But it turns out Nicholas is
far more interested in Joyce, Hannah’s mother. And in yet another thwarted love
relationship, in “Venus in Fur,” the woebegone George confirms what he always
suspected—that his love for Helen can never compete with Helen’s for Millie,
her Pomeranian.

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